The performance of electronic circuits, such as microprocessors, and that of computer systems has continued to increase. Such increasing performance has most often been obtained by aggressive scaling of individual devices, in turn allowing an increase in device density on the silicon circuitry. Additional functionality, cores and memory have also been added to typical circuits. This trend has resulted in a large increase in power dissipation for microprocessors and computer systems.
As a result of the trend towards increased power, there has been an effort to reduce the power consumption of microprocessors and computer systems. Accordingly, a good deal of attention has recently been directed towards so-called power-aware or power-limited designs. In such designs, the goal is to reduce the overall power dissipation of the microprocessor or computer system. The power-aware design is perhaps best suited for computer systems that are limited by power delivery. An example is a lap-top computer limited by its battery lifetime, or a microprocessor limited by current carrying capacity in the packaging.
Given the importance of thermal design to current electronic circuits and computer systems, it may be desirable to seek improved techniques for thermal analysis and design of such systems.